A woman in Canada, on average, earns 70% of what a man earns in the same profession.  A woman in Ethiopia, on average, earns little or nothing and raises her children on an average per person income of $160 per year.

Maureen Fritz-Roberts has been a small business owner in fields typified by poorly paid female workers and large salaries for men, where she has helped her workers overcome the wage differential.  She has also been active in helping women in Ethiopia to get access to small loans so that they can make enough money to feed and educate their children and potentially break through the poverty barrier.

You will want to hear Maureen's inspirational message about how both groups can overcome the reluctance to take a risk, for an opportunity at a better life.

Maureen spent 15 years helping the women she worked with to take chances.  She worked with them to set high goals and to see themselves reaching them.

When Maureen became involved in an insurance agency she discovered that her mostly female employees, many as heads of households, were receiving close to minimum wage.  Those meager salaries were keeping their families at a near poverty level. 

Maureen will talk about how she helped those women to see themselves as competent professionals, first by offering an education program, then worked with them to deal with the natural inclination amongst women to avoid risk, to establish a pay grid based on performance.

One woman set a goal to increase her salary by 200% in five years.  At the end of year 4 she had reached that goal.  When Maureen asked her how she felt about her accomplishment, the woman's reply was "I never thought I would even get close to this income figure.  I just set that goal to make you happy."

That statement was one Maureen never forgot.  It proved that if you are constantly working with someone who wants you to succeed, you can and will reach new heights.  You can and will achieve things you did not think possible.

You will want to hear Maureen's message about the impoverished women of Ethiopia.  There are no safe large employers.  They cannot borrow money in their country.  They have to overcome the fear of failure and the risks of a small enterprise.  Yet when they find someone who puts trust in them, who will give them a micro credit loan, they work to achieve the goal to be successful in their venture.  And 98% of them succeed.  

Sunitayahu is an Ethiopian woman with three children still alive and no husband.  She came to Addis Ababa as a refugee from Eritrea.  She was living on the street until the opening of the Rotary Village, when she was allocated a two-room, concrete block, tin roof, home with a small yard. Sunitayahu was ecstatic with the roof over her head but her worries were not over.  How was she to pay for the water and the electricity?

That is when the Rotarians responsible for the Rotary Village came through with a small loan- a pittance by our standards- a few dollars that she used to plant vegetables and buy others wholesale to sell from a small stall at the corner of her property.  Now she pays her bills and sends her children to school.  That is the power of a small loan in an impoverished country.

When Comox Rotarian Maureen Fritz-Roberts met Sunitayahu and other women like her last year in Ethiopia, she was inspired to go back to those villages where Rotarians are providing clean, safe water and institute a micro-lending program.  You will be amazed by what a few dollars can keep on doing.